Reviews

Fight Night Round 3

Career mode, if not excellent, is at least solid. Players familiar to the franchise will breeze through the training minigames in their quest to take titles. New to the game is the trash-talking press conference brawl minigame, although it's a bit more of a novelty than anything really badass. Again, it's not awful, but it's not going to steer anyone away from Fight Night's incredible multiplayer experience outside of unlocking items, venues, and ESPN Classic grudge bouts. Plus, in order to get a real challenge, players are going to have to crank up the difficulty. Hard Mode, while concussion-inducing to play at first, gives players a real taste of the unleashed and unrestrained fighting styles of the boxers. A match with Roy Jones, Jr. reveals his trademark leans and jabbing style. A match with Marvelous Marvin Hagler left me with a sixty year-old alcoholic's liver after taking several hard shots.

Round 3 on Xbox Live is a mutually great, yet flawed experience. The game is broken down, much like other EA Sports games, on EA Nation's servers. Players can pick from Unranked and Ranked matches. EA has also created stratified servers to give rookies a fighting chance and veterans a challenge. There's also an Analog Only server for Total Punch Control users who want to box rather than turn Fight Night into an arcade-like experience, although it was a bit densely populated when we took a spin online. Unfortunately, a few games were laggy to the point of which I took a loss to disconnect from the server. We're talking 56k slow here. It's probably something that could be resolved over time, but it's still a glaring flaw to have on opening day.

An unfortunate element of online multiplayer that can't be fixed is the mismatching of gameplay styles. Since EA Chicago doesn't see fit to either strengthen Total Punch Control more or crippling button usage more within the game, it's tough to find a match up if you're a TPC player playing against a twitchy button masher. It's the fundamental difference of a boxer taking on a Tekken character, and outside of the sparsely populated Analog Only room, it would be nice to have an indicator within the gameplay menu that one opponent is utilizing a different style over another. It makes a huge difference in the game, and shouldn't be overlooked.

In closing, Fight Night Round 3 is one of the first absolutely must-own titles for Xbox 360. The controls have been greatly improved over last year's game, with much-abused control schemes getting reined in a bit. The visuals are undoubtedly among the most impressive on the system at this point, as the tech demos from last year whetted millions of gamers' collective appetite for this title, boxing fans or not. If there are any issues that ultimately prevent this game from achieving five stars, they lie in the realms of online multiplayer and Career Mode. The Career Mode, while somewhat fun, is a tad unfulfilling to play. Xbox Live alternates between smooth gameplay and modem-like lag, and the organization could be a bit better in regard to matchmaking and gameplay styles, although players who keep it narrowed to the friends list should be fine. While Round 3 doesn't achieve perfection, it comes pretty damn close. It's undoubtedly the best-feeling Fight Night game to play, and the first sports game on Xbox 360 to truly feel next-gen.